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I’m still a neutral in this Liberal Leadership race, and haven’t decided yet who I’ll vote for and in what order, but I can certainly tell you who isn’t going to be on my voting ballot – Martha Hall Findlay.

Yes, she represents (or tries to represent) the centre-right in the Liberal Party, and there needs to be a conduit for those views, but she went over the line when she openly said Joyce Murray should be running for the leadership of another party due to her cooperation views with other parties – a tactic that led to the most unusual step of Liberal MP’s openly being critical of MHF […]

A nice article by Tim Harper on Liberal Leadership candidate Joyce Murray can be found here. There seems to be a growing impression Ms. Murray will do well in voting in the Liberal leadership race (relatively speaking, considering how many supporters Justin Trudeau has signed up).

Now, I’ll say again that I’m still neutral on what candidate I’d vote for (and I do have a vote, as I registered awhile back), and quite frankly, I’m not in total agreement with Ms. Murray on electoral reform, specifically that we should be trying to push proportional representation. It’s good in principle, but I think that Canadians have shown they have no appetite […]

A couple of weeks back, as I did with the OLP candidates, I submitted a series of questions (6 of them) to the LPC leadership candidates, making it clear that answers would be posted to this blog, and by extension of being on the various aggregates, as well as active on Twitter and Facebook, all over the internet and the social media world in general. A couple of these were even suggested by some LPC members, when I solicited for what type of common questions they wanted the candidates to be asked. Some were rather provocative, and I included them, if only to see what we got for replies. The […]

As mentioned, Sunday March 3, Midnight is the last day for supporters (or LPC members for that matter) to sign up with the intent of voting for the next Liberal leader. You may have seen elsewhere that some high profile organizations have been openly urging their membership to sign up as supporters and vote for leadership candidate Joyce Murray, as they support her stance on electoral cooperation in selected ridings to stop splitting the anti-CPC vote in an effort to oust the Conservatives using a united candidate in those ridings.

Leadnow has about 225,000 members. Avaaz has over 500 000 (they claim actually 688 000 Canadians are members on their […]

Sunday March 3 is the last day you can sign up to become a “Supporter” of the federal Liberal Party of Canada and be eligible to vote for the new Liberal Leader.

The link for you to go register (for free) is here

Once you sign up, you will get further instructions on how/where/when to vote.

It’s not a perfect way I feel for voting; I think it can be improved upon; but its an attempt to allow all Canadians not affiliated with other parties to have a voice/vote/say in who they want to see run the LPC. I encourage you to participate in this democratic experiment.

Another in the series of Liberal debates happened on the weekend. As you might have heard, Martha Hall Findlay decided to go after Justin Trudeau on the question of privilege and class – whether someone who’s been privileged as Justin Trudeau has been can actually speak for the middle class was the premise of the question.

Quite frankly, the way it was put came out rather classless, but it was apparent Mr. Trudeau was anticipating it – as he turned it into a passionate defense of what he stands for. MHF would later give a “sorta apology” for the question – such was the blow-back on it which more or […]

I’m told bloggers can use the media inquiry page to register for the showcase (Ed Note: the April 6 Event at the Metro Toronto Convention Center) event, and language about bloggers should be up shortly…No cost, you’re registering as media. I don’t know how many, etc. Sarah Bain’s info is in the form;I’d suggest her as the for more info..

The media accreditation form of which he refers to is at this link:

http://www.liberal.ca/leadership-2013/media-inquiries/

I’ve already sent in my application, plus an inquiry on when the last day to register for accreditation is, whether or not they intend to […]

I got the questions finished last night and have submitted them to people I know on 4 of the campaigns: George Takach, Marc Garneau, Deborah Coyne and Joyce Murray.

I’m still looking around trying to find out who to talk to on the Justin Trudeau/Martha Hall Findlay /David Bertschi/Martin Cauchon/Karen McCrimmon teams as to who to submit these 6 Questions for the leader candidates to respond to (if they so choose to answer, of course -that would be noted on the blog and the aggregates it goes to as well).

If any on those teams or in the know would like to direct me to who I’d submit these […]

I’m turning back my attention briefly to the Federal Liberal campaign to mention that I’m pleased to see Marc Garneau state he supports electoral reform, and that he supports a version of it that has not been tested in any referendum, and in fact is quite familiar to all the political parties:

If elected, my proposal would be to reform Canada’s electoral system by changing our voting process to a preferential ballot, or a ranked ballot. Used by many other nations, as well as the leadership races for the Liberal Party of Canada, the federal NDP and the Conservative Party of Canada, a preferential ballot better reflects the will of […]